The Future of Young Manchester

Young Manchester, like many VCSE sector organisations, has been on a journey in the last 18 months. Alongside the pandemic and the many challenges it has presented us all, changes to local commissioning have led us to review and connect with our fundamental purpose, as well as what we do, and how we do it.

We’ve spent the last few months listening to partners and supporters, locally and nationally – about what we all want for services, what we want for our city and most importantly what we want for children and young people (and actually what they want). Thank you all for your time, your commitment, your skills and expertise – it has helped us to ensure that we are shaping a future Young Manchester that is relevant and needed.

We believe, with your support, that Young Manchester is a force for positive, collective change in Manchester, and that we can all play a role in supporting the youth and play sector to thrive in the coming years. Together, we want to support a strong and ambitious sector, building partnerships across all parts of the system.

We’ve made a lot of progress in the last few years, but there is a lot more to do – despite our collective efforts (and the incredible work of the VCSE sector), Manchester remains a city with huge challenges, not least for children and young people.

To best achieve our ambitions, we are making some changes to how Young Manchester is run in the coming months:

• • We are going to support partners to shape and inform the charity and provide further opportunities for collaboration and collective action – we will become a membership organisation, supporting a growing network of organisations which share our ambitions and values
  • We are going to give up power and place it in the hands of young people – through our own governance at board level, leadership within the organisation and our grant making
  • We are going to strengthen our partnership work nationally, and ensure Young Manchester is at the heart of the future of youth and play work – we are strengthening our connections to the Young People’s Foundation (YPF) network, and their partners via the YPF Trust, a new charity supporting the growing movement of YPFs and local youth partnerships
  • We are going to support further opportunities to collaborate with organisations that share our ambitions and values locally, regionally and nationally to best support children and young people

Our central vision remains – we want to support outstanding opportunities for all children and young people.

We will continue to do this through bringing investment to the city, supporting local and national partnerships, strengthening networks and making the case for quality youth and play work and support for children and young people.

As ever, we will always do this in partnership – we will never act alone. We won’t compete and we won’t directly deliver youth and play services.

And we will continue to do this as an independent charity, enhancing our commitment to being shaped by our partners and by young people themselves.

As part of our transition, we are making some changes to the Young Manchester team and board:

• • We will be recruiting to a new young Joint-Chair of the board of trustees, and committing to further representation of young people on our board alongside Roukagia, Bounty and Dan
  • Justin will be moving across to the YPF Trust from January 2022, to become their new CEO. He will remain closely and directly involved in Young Manchester’s work, supporting specific activities including leadership networks, national collaborations and fundraising.
  • Imogen will be our Interim CEO from January 2022, leading on the next phase of our work including developing our membership offer and opportunities for young people to shape Young Manchester, including in senior leadership positions (watch this space!).

We are seeking to recruit to the team to support Justin, Imogen and the wider team in the coming months. We would love to hear from you if you’d like to work with us, either in partnerships or admin/operations. We are keen to hear from anyone with a passion for children and young people and the city.

Find out more about these new roles here.

We’re looking forward to making these changes and building on our collective work for children and young people, making an impact now and in the long term. If you would like to get involved then please get in touch, we’d love to hear from you!

The Young Manchester team: Justin, Imogen, Moragh, Rachel, Henry, Matt, Megan, Liv, Sam and Caia

The Young Manchester board of trustees: Sarah, Simone, Angela, George, Roukagia, Dan, Bounty, Kate and Furqan